by Victoria Sue
Table of Contents
Blurb
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
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Copyright
In Safe Hands
By Victoria Sue
Former helicopter pilot Maverick Delgardo’s injuries ended his Air Force career, leaving him bitter and one drink away from becoming an alcoholic. When his sister asks for his help on a private protection case to babysit a disgraced pop star, Mav reluctantly agrees.
Deacon Daniels, onetime lead singer and idol to his teenage fans, saw his career and reputation ruined when a reporter’s exposé led to a devastating scandal. Without money or a job, a heartbroken Deacon has lost custody of his baby niece. And just when he thinks his life can’t get any worse, a stalker’s threatening messages escalate to murder.
Mav only agreed to one meeting, but his protective instincts kick in, along with an attraction to Deacon. When the body count increases, however, Mav is unsure he is up to the task of protecting Deacon from a killer. But it is too late for Mav to step away, now that he’s lost his heart, and he must find the strength to reassure Deacon and his niece that they are in safe hands no matter the cost.
Chapter One
HE WAS going to die.
“Breathe, Mav. Come on,” the familiar voice cajoled. “In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
He was burning. Flames licked their fiery path to his heart.
“Count with me. In and hold. One… two…. Out for one and two.”
Blackened faces.
Dead eyes.
“Mav, Mav, let me go, honey. Mav, you’re hurting me.”
The chopper in flames.
“Mav!”
The pained cry pierced the dust cloud rolling in over the desert, and the smell of coffee—wait, what, coffee?—tickled his nose. The deep breath his lungs screamed for flooded his system, and Mav opened his eyes. He saw his sister’s living room, the stone fireplace with the pictures of his niece from a baby all the way up to junior year. And the new photo. The one he hadn’t noticed before. The one of him walking across the tarmac five or so years ago. All of them in flight suits. Cass and him laughing at some joke Charlie had told. In the oppressive Somalian desert they’d have been happier in board shorts, but he doubted Uncle Sam would be. His sister must have found it and innocently thought to display it, and it had been enough to set him off. Dumped him in the rabbit hole that was his life. Some days were harder to climb out than others.
He didn’t realize the TV was blaring until he focused on it, and he looked up into Jamie’s worried face as she muted it. No, her pained face as she rubbed her arm. Shit. “Jamie, I’m sorry.” The angry marks, where his fingers had been crushing her wrist, were livid even on her already dark skin. “Shit.” He said it out loud this time and tried to sit up.
Her gentle hand on his shoulder slowed him down, and she smiled, brown eyes full of worry. “My fault for trying to wake you up suddenly.” Her eyes slid to the half-empty bottle of Jack and the dregs of some in a tumbler. He didn’t hear the defeated sigh, but he knew it would have left her lungs.
He swallowed the disgusting taste of old liquor and fear down his dry throat and reached for the coffee she had put on the small coffee table. He didn’t bother saying sorry again, as those words were getting older than the whiskey.
“I need a favor, Mav,” Jamie said, and sudden shame burned through him. He’d been crashing at his older sister’s for a month—no, make that three—since he’d given up on the therapy and the good intentions that would never get him back to what he was meant for, never make him whole. She’d never criticized. Never asked him for anything except to keep his whiskey away from Melanie, his seventeen-year-old niece. Not that Melanie ever seemed to venture anywhere near him.
Sensible kid.
Like her mom.
But Jamie and Melanie were both struggling since his no-good brother-in-law decided a wife and family weren’t enough for him and went off to have a midlife crisis in Aruba, or some such place with sun, sand, and a twenty-four-year-old named Traci, or Terry, or turd as he had heard Melanie call her.
His brain processed Jamie’s request as he practically inhaled the coffee. Not that he could do much, and if the favor involved him going to an appointment or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting—he wasn’t quite there yet, but give him another month—Jamie was shit out of luck.
Caffeine flooded his system. Not enough to chase the alcohol away completely, but he wasn’t seeing sand anymore. Or bodies….
“I need a favor, little brother,” Jamie repeated, and Mav groaned inaudibly. Really? She was gonna bring out the brother card?
“So long as you don’t need me to run errands.” The sarcasm shot out deadlier than a round from his service 9mm Beretta, and even he winced at the look on Jamie’s face when it hit.
“That’s not fair,” Jamie retorted, and Mav watched in detached interest as his sister finally lost her temper the way he’d been goading her into doing for what seemed all their lives. “I need you to do one thing.”
He’d been here three months, and this was the first time she had asked him for anything. He had to know. “What do you need?”
“I need you to look competent and go sit behind the desk in the office for me.”
“No.” The refusal left Mav’s lips before he’d even thought about it.
“No one cares, Mav.” Jamie’s immediate retort was blunt.
I do. He’d seen the averted eyes and the rush of words people stumbled over as they tried not to look him in the face—or not look at his scarred face—as they spoke to him. Even the doctors always seemed to want to race through the bad news. Some couldn’t look him in the eye. But none of it was Jamie’s fault.
“Why do I need to look competent?” Shame burned through every nerve until his guilt was ash in the back of his throat. He’d never needed to look competent before; as a US Air Force pilot, competence had been his middle name.
Now it was just cripple.
“Because I have papers to serve, and Aaron Malloy is in town. I am reliably told he will stop to visit his on-again, off-again girlfriend at the Blue Room, and it’s gonna be my only chance.”
It was Mav’s turn to frown as he glanced at the time on his phone. It was already after five. He hated Jamie being a process server, but seeing as how Simon—his no-good former brother-in-law—had abandoned his family and the small agency they ran, she had no choice. Unfortunately, the bastard had emptied their joint bank accounts, including Melanie’s college money, on his way to the airport. And while they might not have a mortgage anymore, his sister still had to live and his niece still had to go to school.
“Can’t you just rearrange it?”
Jamie answered him with her trademark “Mom till I die” look and sat down on the couch. It squeaked alarmingly. The back room had been an area for Melanie to hang out with her friends when Jamie didn’t want them to go upstairs into Melanie’s room, but si
nce Mav descended on them, he had commandeered it as his. Melanie didn’t care, as she wanted the excuse for her friends to be upstairs with her, and now her mom couldn’t object. And it was opposite the downstairs bathroom and small shower, which Mav didn’t use as much as he should.
As if Jamie heard his thoughts, she wrinkled her nose. “You need to look like a grown-up. I’ve been recommended to a possible new client, and if I’m going to get the agency started, I need all the help I can get, and even I can’t do two things at once.”
Mav let the comment slide. “Who is it?”
Jamie looked over at the TV she had muted, clicked through the TV menu, and increased the volume. He glanced at her in surprise. The program was a repeat of a much earlier news item. “Do you know who that is?”
He watched the old clip of the interview they’d shown right after a group he recognized playing in some concert. He rolled his eyes. “The whole world knows who Six Sundays are. Were,” he added.
The screen panned to the lead singer, Deacon Daniels—which had to be a made-up name—and Mav vaguely remembered the story detailing his career implosion and the demise of the band. Good-looking, obviously, but Mav would bet the blue of Daniels’s eyes was helped with contact lenses. And his skin was so white, it had to be helped with makeup. Airhead. Mav dismissed him. “What’s he done now?”
“According to his publicist—Shirley Maplin, one of my closest friends—he actually hasn’t done anything.”
“I thought he had an accident or—”
“No, it was his stalker, or that was what they thought at the time. The problems go back to about a year ago, not long after their first hit single. They’d signed a deal with Sony, and Nickelodeon had a show in the works for them. Then this reporter did a big exposé on Deacon and found out that his brother—five years older than him—recently died of a drug overdose. Sony dropped them, and the Nickelodeon show was canceled. Sued the band members for breach of contract—”
“Why?” Mav interrupted. This was getting way too complicated for just coffee, and his eyes strayed to the bottle of Jack.
“Because the reporter implied a connection with Deacon and drug use. Small print, essentially. If they do something to damage the band’s image within two years of signing, they get sued personally for all the promo money lost. Between that and the legal fees, which ran into tens of thousands, they are all broke. The band members all blamed Deacon, hoping if they distanced themselves, Sony might reconsider, but apparently, Deacon was the main draw.”
Mav shook his head. “Whatever happened to sex, drugs, and rock and roll?” Fuck, he felt old.
“Tweenagers,” Jamie said with a straight face. “Or basically, the new biggest spender in the music industry, but because it’s essentially their parents who are coughing up the cash, any group aimed at the adolescent market has to be squeaky clean.”
“And the stalker?”
“His fool agent—apparently—made up an elaborate stalker plot to try and garner public sympathy, hoping to resurrect the Sony deal, and it got way out of hand when a woman handed herself in to the cops.”
“How long ago was all this?”
“Last year but the whole thing blew up again around Thanksgiving when this woman ‘confessed’ and had the press chasing her everywhere.”
“And she ran the car off a road?” Mav tried to remember, but seven months ago he hadn’t been in a state to remember much of anything.
“With her one-year-old son in it, yes.” Jamie looked woefully at the TV. “They both died when the car went up in flames. Anyway, the networks tried to crucify Daniels, saying the hoax had resulted in this woman’s death.”
“And what has any of this got to do with us?”
“You know. We have a friend out in Oregon who started a similar business serving papers like us but progressed to other things. Protection, even bond enforcement. He’s ex-military and has loads of contacts. Anyway, he told Simon last year he could easily give him some tips—”
“But you don’t have any ex—” Shit. It had been him. He’d forgotten that had been their original intention and vaguely seemed to remember a drunken talk one night when he had been home on leave. He’d been eager and listed a few of his buddies he knew would help. Of course, it was before his own world had imploded. The plan had been to incorporate protection into their agency, and while Mav had no intention of chasing shoplifters, it had been an area he was going to be involved in when he finished his twenty and left the Air Force in any other way than the manner he had been forced to.
“I’m confused.” And thirsty. He glanced at the empty glass on the table. “I must be missing something. He doesn’t need papers served, and he doesn’t need protection. He might need a better attorney if it isn’t too late, but why has he got an appointment in the first place?”
“Daniels went to the cops last week and reported what he believes might be another stalker.” Jamie wrinkled her nose to show what she thought of his decision.
“And the cops are saying, what?”
“The cops laughed him out of the precinct.” Jamie sighed. “Everyone thinks Daniels is trying to pull the same stunt he did before.”
“But wouldn’t that be incredibly stupid?”
Jamie nodded. “Exactly, and from what Shirley tells me—”
“Do you trust her?”
“She has some narration work lined up for him—audiobooks are a big thing. If that works out, he may do voice-over commercial work. Apparently his spoken voice is as good as his singing one. It’s a really good chance for him, but if he’s to have any chance of resurrecting his career, this needs to be resolved quickly, so he needs to stay out of the limelight.”
“When you say ‘resolved quickly,’ what do you mean? You’re not running a detective agency, sis.” Mav let a little amusement creep into his voice.
Jamie rolled her eyes. “Shirley thinks the stress might be getting to him.”
And the penny dropped. “She thinks he’s making this whole thing up too?” Wonderful. Daniels was some diva who wanted the attention for fuck knew why.
“She wants us to hold his hand for a couple of days. I know we’re not officially protecting anyone yet, but she needs someone discreet.”
It made some sense. Jamie had been a cop for six years before Melanie was born and twelve years after. Running a home and an office never stopped her from going to the range or running the marathons she favored. “And there’s no way this is for real? It’s been a long time since you had to protect and serve, sis.”
Jamie grinned. “I know. They only need someone to look good. No chasing down suspects or anything.”
“As if I can do either,” Mav muttered.
Jamie met his gaze unflinchingly. “Don’t you think you’ve hosted this one-man pity party long enough?” She smirked. “Besides which, I think it makes you look badass.”
More like Freddy Krueger, Mav thought, and forced himself not to finger the burn scars that twisted the skin on his neck and jaw.
“Shirley promised me an insane amount of money for two days because she can trust me to keep my mouth closed,” Jamie continued. “If he’s still here when I get back, I’ll take over if you want me to.”
Mav tried to decide if Jamie was saying this because she actually wanted to branch out, or she had just found a way to get Mav off his butt. But he owed her. “Tell me again what you want me to do?”
“I need you to get shaved, showered, and dressed for starters,” Jamie said pointedly. “Then I need you to sit behind the desk in the office and reassure him, get details.”
Mav took a deep breath and tried to keep the hand holding the coffee from shaking.
“Do you need any help?” Jamie asked gently.
He shook his head and reached for his leg.
His plastic one.
Which was the reason he wasn’t still in the Air Force being useful, and the reason all he could do to help his sister was sit behind a desk. He couldn’t protect anyone a
nymore.
Not even pretty blue-eyed boys.
Chapter Two
DEACON PULLED his car to a stop and gazed with interest at the two-story house. Quiet neighborhood but close enough to the neighbors to be social, and one of the nicest in Atlanta. A family home, and very different from where he was living. He looked at his GPS to make sure he was at the right address—Vanguard Circle in southwest Marietta—and ran his hand over the buttery-soft leather console almost absently. Shirley had called the BMW his grown-up car. He would have been happier with a minivan because some of them had very cool stuff for Molly, but as that wasn’t exactly an issue now, he didn’t care that the car would be taken off him soon. In fact, it was probably just as well it was going to get repossessed, because it would likely be stolen anyway if not. Deacon smiled wryly. Gallows humor his grandad, Pops, would call it and would chuckle in a mock evil way over whatever joke he had just told.
He scrambled out of the car and couldn’t help the automatic glance at the empty back seat. Molly would have been giggling excitedly now. She loved taking any sort of trip with him.
Deacon brushed his sweaty palms down his jeans and tried to slow his breathing. Shirley had said Jamie would be perfect. A mom herself, an ex-cop, and old enough to have the right amount of common sense. Deacon knew the criticism had been aimed at him. Shirley thought he had lost his mind and was about to push away the first decent chance in over a year. But her reaction wasn’t as embarrassing as the desk sergeant. Hell, that had been an exercise in humility. This was his last chance to convince someone to listen to him, and as he glanced at the time on his phone, he knew he’d better move. Being late wasn’t likely to get Shirley’s friend to be sympathetic.
He walked up the path, wishing he was wearing shorts and not caring what he looked like for once. He couldn’t help the nervous glances he threw around, but the reporters had all slithered underground again. It was unlikely they were still following him. He pressed the bell, hearing the echo and then the measured steps on what was probably a tiled floor.